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Unified Description of Tunneling Transport in Ultracold Atomic Gases

Hiroyuki Tajima, Daigo Oue, Mamoru Matsuo

Published Oct 22, 2021• 0 citations
OpenAlex

Abstract

We derive tunneling Hamiltonians from a microscopic model of ultracold atoms separated by an external potential barrier. Not only usual one-body tunneling but also pair- and spin-tunneling processes naturally arise from a well-known microscopic model without any empirical parameters, where the tunneling process occurs via local transfer in the overlapped region of the many-body wave functions around the potential barrier. Applying the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism to the effective model in the momentum space, we demonstrate how anomalous tunneling currents occur via the tunneling Hamiltonians in strongly interacting systems. Our formulation is useful for various junction systems as well as sheds light on a clear connection between atomtronics and spintronics.

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Multiparticle tunneling transport at strongly correlated interfaces

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We elucidate the multiparticle transport of pair tunneling and spin tunneling in strongly correlated interfaces. Not only usual single-particle tunneling but also interaction-induced multiparticle tunneling processes naturally arise from a conventional microscopic model without any empirical parameters, through the overlap of the many-body wave functions around the interface. We demonstrate how anomalous tunneling currents occur in a strongly interacting system due to the pair-tunneling process which we derived microscopically. Our formulation is useful for junction systems in various disciplines, including atomtronics, spintronics, and nuclear reactions.

arXiv:2110.11701•Physical Review A•Sep 9, 2022•9 citations

Interaction mediated electron transport within the many-body tunnelling Hamiltonian

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Abstract For a non-superconducting system and in the spirit of the transfer or tunnelling Hamiltonian formalism, an expression for the electronic tunnelling current through an insulating barrier is calculated, explicitly taking into account the effects of electron-electron interactions that can persist across the barrier. In the presence of a single tunnelling barrier, the exact Hamiltonian is projected onto the subspaces of the ‘left’ and ‘right’ conducting leads. In the weak-tunnelling limit, the well-known tunnelling Hamiltonian is recovered, along with an additional term. This additional term originates from the projection of the electron-electron interaction onto each subspace and corresponds to a correlated or interaction-mediated tunnelling. It is shown that the tunnelling current in this approximation is related to—in addition to the single-particle density of states—the two-particle spin-spin and density-density susceptibilities. The signatures of these terms have been observed in scanning tunnelling microscope experiments on atomic spin chains.

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Many-body quantum tunneling of ultracold bosonic gases : quantum phase transitions, bosonic Josephson junctions, and Mott switch atomtronics

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Ultracold Bose gases as precise quantum simulators have emerged amongst the leaders in the current race  – a second quantum revolution  – toward the promise of unfathomable sensitivity, scope, and speed of a new era of technology. The only path leading to these advancements is through many-body descriptions, especially in regimes where interatomic interactions render many approximations incompatible with the physics. The research in this dissertation unlocks a piece of this mystery through investigations of many-body quantum tunneling of ultracold bosons in optical lattices. A key mechanism to characterizing the dynamics, matrix product state simulations equip the many-body toolbox with efficient optimization of large Hilbert spaces together with correlation and entropy measures that help clarify when semiclassical or mean-field approximations fail. In this thesis we obtain the following results. Macroscopic quantum tunneling escape of a Bose-Einstein condensate  – comprised of tens of thousands of 87Rb atoms  – from a single well, as portrayed through both experiment and theory, highlights non-exponential decay in the number of atoms trapped behind the barrier. Additionally, explicit symmetry breaking of a biperiodic optical lattice ring trap to a uniform one illustrates a critical symmetry-breaking strength at which the system transitions from a state of remembering to a state of forgetting its initial symmetry state; this symmetry memory indicates a new form of quantum dynamics that requires the quantum advantage for scaling up particle number and lattice sites. Extensive characterization of dynamical regimes in a bosonic Josephson junction  – underlaid by an optical lattice as described by the Bose-Hubbard model  – reveal substantial deviation of many body dynamics from the mean field or semiclassical predictions underlying the usual operating regime of Josephson junctions. Initial state population and phase yield insight into dynamic tunneling regimes of a quasi one-dimensional double well potential, through the Z2 spontaneous symmetry-breaking phase transition from Josephson oscillations to macroscopic self-trapping. We demonstrate that with increasing repulsive interaction strength, the U(1) superfluid-Mott insulator phase transition induces localized dynamics in the number density, such as particle-hole and soliton formation. Moreover, g^(2) correlations unveil a new dynamic regime  – the Fock flashlight. The new field of atomtronics  – or atomic circuits  – has emerged with many studies of weakly-interacting condensates. In contrast, and building on our work on many-body effects in the double wells underlying Josephson junctions, we present a proof-of-principle of a Mott-insulating atomtronic switch that requires strongly-interacting bosons. Through transient analysis, we reveal that hole conductance can be modulated via tuning interaction strength through a critical value, thus propelling the state to the next ``wedding cake'' layer of the Mott insulating structure. This critical interaction strength is a…

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Axel U. J. Lode, Alexej I. Streltsov, Kaspar Sakmann +2 more

The tunneling process in a many-body system is a phenomenon which lies at the very heart of quantum mechanics. It appears in nature in the form of α-decay, fusion and fission in nuclear physics, and photoassociation and photodissociation in biology and chemistry. A detailed theoretical description of the decay process in these systems is a very cumbersome problem, either because of very complicated or even unknown interparticle interactions or due to a large number of constituent particles. In this work, we theoretically study the phenomenon of quantum many-body tunneling in a transparent and controllable physical system, an ultracold atomic gas. We analyze a full, numerically exact many-body solution of the Schrödinger equation of a one-dimensional system with repulsive interactions tunneling to open space. We show how the emitted particles dissociate or fragment from the trapped and coherent source of bosons: The overall many-particle decay process is a quantum interference of single-particle tunneling processes emerging from sources with different particle numbers taking place simultaneously. The close relation to atom lasers and ionization processes allows us to unveil the great relevance of many-body correlations between the emitted and trapped fractions of the wave function in the respective processes.

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Quantum Tunneling Through a Mode-Quantized Barrier: A Dynamical Second-Quantization Framework

Linbin Zheng, Junheng Pan, Jau Tang

Quantum tunneling is conventionally described by the Schrödinger wave equation with a prescribed static potential barrier, providing accurate transmission probabilities but offering limited insight into the microscopic dynamics of particle–barrier interactions. In this work, we develop a dynamical second-quantization framework in which the barrier is modeled as an ensemble of quantized internal modes rather than as an externally imposed classical potential. The tunneling particle interacts directly with these microscopic barrier excitations through a coupled particle–barrier Hamiltonian, from which the Heisenberg equations of motion are derived. Collective coherent excitations of the barrier modes give rise to an emergent effective barrier that naturally recovers the conventional rectangular barrier and the WKB transmission limit under appropriate conditions. Unlike standard treatments, the present formulation explicitly incorporates microscopic barrier dynamics and provides a unified description of particle–barrier coupling within a second-quantized formalism. The framework further suggests that repeated tunneling events may experience different microscopic interaction histories, motivating a statistical interpretation of tunneling times. Because both the particle and barrier are treated within the same operator formalism, the theory provides a natural foundation for extension to relativistic quantum transport, photonic barriers, cavity quantum electrodynamics, and other structured quantum media.

Photonics•Aug 21, 2026•0 citations

Tunneling of ultracold Bose gases in multiple wells

R. Paredes

We study the dynamics of an ultracold gas of interacting bosons confined in a one-dimensional potential composed of $n$ wells. We derive an effective $N$-particle Hamiltonian for this system that describes the tunneling of particles between adjacent wells and that includes the interactions among the particles within the same well. The problem is discussed in the light of current research on optical lattices. We demonstrate that the effective Hamiltonian gives the possibility of studying the transition from an ideal insulator to a real conductor when the parameters that modulate the interaction and the tunneling of the particles are varied. To show this we numerically solve Schr\"odinger equation for the case of $n=3$ wells. We find that for a given number of particles it is possible to establish a weak- and a strong-interaction regime. In the limit of strong interaction the tunneling term can be neglected. One important result in our analysis is that in the weak-interaction regime the system reaches a stationary state as a result of the loss of coherence in the transport of particles through the wells.

Physical Review A•Mar 17, 2006•14 citations
We derive tunneling Hamiltonians from a microscopic model of ultracold atoms separated by an external potential barrier. Not only usual one-body tunneling but also pair- and spin-tunneling processes naturally arise from a well-known microscopic model without any empirical parameters, where the tunneling process occurs via local transfer in the overlapped region of the many-body wave functions around the potential barrier. Applying the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism to the effective model in the momentum space, we demonstrate how anomalous tunneling currents occur via the tunneling Hamiltonians in strongly interacting systems. Our formulation is useful for various junction systems as well as sheds light on a clear connection between atomtronics and spintronics.
We elucidate the multiparticle transport of pair tunneling and spin tunneling in strongly correlated interfaces. Not only usual single-particle tunneling but also interaction-induced multiparticle tunneling processes naturally arise from a conventional microscopic model without any empirical parameters, through the overlap of the many-body wave functions around the interface. We demonstrate how anomalous tunneling currents occur in a strongly interacting system due to the pair-tunneling process which we derived microscopically. Our formulation is useful for junction systems in various disciplines, including atomtronics, spintronics, and nuclear reactions.
Abstract For a non-superconducting system and in the spirit of the transfer or tunnelling Hamiltonian formalism, an expression for the electronic tunnelling current through an insulating barrier is calculated, explicitly taking into account the effects of electron-electron interactions that can persist across the barrier. In the presence of a single tunnelling barrier, the exact Hamiltonian is projected onto the subspaces of the ‘left’ and ‘right’ conducting leads. In the weak-tunnelling limit, the well-known tunnelling Hamiltonian is recovered, along with an additional term. This additional term originates from the projection of the electron-electron interaction onto each subspace and corresponds to a correlated or interaction-mediated tunnelling. It is shown that the tunnelling current in this approximation is related to—in addition to the single-particle density of states—the two-particle spin-spin and density-density susceptibilities. The signatures of these terms have been observed in scanning tunnelling microscope experiments on atomic spin chains.
Ultracold Bose gases as precise quantum simulators have emerged amongst the leaders in the current race  – a second quantum revolution  – toward the promise of unfathomable sensitivity, scope, and speed of a new era of technology. The only path leading to these advancements is through many-body descriptions, especially in regimes where interatomic interactions render many approximations incompatible with the physics. The research in this dissertation unlocks a piece of this mystery through investigations of many-body quantum tunneling of ultracold bosons in optical lattices. A key mechanism to characterizing the dynamics, matrix product state simulations equip the many-body toolbox with efficient optimization of large Hilbert spaces together with correlation and entropy measures that help clarify when semiclassical or mean-field approximations fail. In this thesis we obtain the following results. Macroscopic quantum tunneling escape of a Bose-Einstein condensate  – comprised of tens of thousands of 87Rb atoms  – from a single well, as portrayed through both experiment and theory, highlights non-exponential decay in the number of atoms trapped behind the barrier. Additionally, explicit symmetry breaking of a biperiodic optical lattice ring trap to a uniform one illustrates a critical symmetry-breaking strength at which the system transitions from a state of remembering to a state of forgetting its initial symmetry state; this symmetry memory indicates a new form of quantum dynamics that requires the quantum advantage for scaling up particle number and lattice sites. Extensive characterization of dynamical regimes in a bosonic Josephson junction  – underlaid by an optical lattice as described by the Bose-Hubbard model  – reveal substantial deviation of many body dynamics from the mean field or semiclassical predictions underlying the usual operating regime of Josephson junctions. Initial state population and phase yield insight into dynamic tunneling regimes of a quasi one-dimensional double well potential, through the Z2 spontaneous symmetry-breaking phase transition from Josephson oscillations to macroscopic self-trapping. We demonstrate that with increasing repulsive interaction strength, the U(1) superfluid-Mott insulator phase transition induces localized dynamics in the number density, such as particle-hole and soliton formation. Moreover, g^(2) correlations unveil a new dynamic regime  – the Fock flashlight. The new field of atomtronics  – or atomic circuits  – has emerged with many studies of weakly-interacting condensates. In contrast, and building on our work on many-body effects in the double wells underlying Josephson junctions, we present a proof-of-principle of a Mott-insulating atomtronic switch that requires strongly-interacting bosons. Through transient analysis, we reveal that hole conductance can be modulated via tuning interaction strength through a critical value, thus propelling the state to the next ``wedding cake'' layer of the Mott insulating structure. This critical interaction strength is a…
The tunneling process in a many-body system is a phenomenon which lies at the very heart of quantum mechanics. It appears in nature in the form of α-decay, fusion and fission in nuclear physics, and photoassociation and photodissociation in biology and chemistry. A detailed theoretical description of the decay process in these systems is a very cumbersome problem, either because of very complicated or even unknown interparticle interactions or due to a large number of constituent particles. In this work, we theoretically study the phenomenon of quantum many-body tunneling in a transparent and controllable physical system, an ultracold atomic gas. We analyze a full, numerically exact many-body solution of the Schrödinger equation of a one-dimensional system with repulsive interactions tunneling to open space. We show how the emitted particles dissociate or fragment from the trapped and coherent source of bosons: The overall many-particle decay process is a quantum interference of single-particle tunneling processes emerging from sources with different particle numbers taking place simultaneously. The close relation to atom lasers and ionization processes allows us to unveil the great relevance of many-body correlations between the emitted and trapped fractions of the wave function in the respective processes.
Quantum tunneling is conventionally described by the Schrödinger wave equation with a prescribed static potential barrier, providing accurate transmission probabilities but offering limited insight into the microscopic dynamics of particle–barrier interactions. In this work, we develop a dynamical second-quantization framework in which the barrier is modeled as an ensemble of quantized internal modes rather than as an externally imposed classical potential. The tunneling particle interacts directly with these microscopic barrier excitations through a coupled particle–barrier Hamiltonian, from which the Heisenberg equations of motion are derived. Collective coherent excitations of the barrier modes give rise to an emergent effective barrier that naturally recovers the conventional rectangular barrier and the WKB transmission limit under appropriate conditions. Unlike standard treatments, the present formulation explicitly incorporates microscopic barrier dynamics and provides a unified description of particle–barrier coupling within a second-quantized formalism. The framework further suggests that repeated tunneling events may experience different microscopic interaction histories, motivating a statistical interpretation of tunneling times. Because both the particle and barrier are treated within the same operator formalism, the theory provides a natural foundation for extension to relativistic quantum transport, photonic barriers, cavity quantum electrodynamics, and other structured quantum media.
We study the dynamics of an ultracold gas of interacting bosons confined in a one-dimensional potential composed of nnn wells. We derive an effective NNN-particle Hamiltonian for this system that describes the tunneling of particles between adjacent wells and that includes the interactions among the particles within the same well. The problem is discussed in the light of current research on optical lattices. We demonstrate that the effective Hamiltonian gives the possibility of studying the transition from an ideal insulator to a real conductor when the parameters that modulate the interaction and the tunneling of the particles are varied. To show this we numerically solve Schr\"odinger equation for the case of n=3n=3n=3 wells. We find that for a given number of particles it is possible to establish a weak- and a strong-interaction regime. In the limit of strong interaction the tunneling term can be neglected. One important result in our analysis is that in the weak-interaction regime the system reaches a stationary state as a result of the loss of coherence in the transport of particles through the wells.